Summary and Analysis of The Reeve's Tale
Prologue to the Reeve's Tale:
The reactions of the crowd to the Miller's Tale were mixed, although many laughed. Only Oswald, the elderly Reeve was offended. He claims that with age the qualities of boasting, lying, anger and covetousness fade away. He vows to repay the Miller's Tale.
Analysis
The prologue to the Reeve's Tale continues the pattern established with the prologue to the Miller's Tale. Just as the Miller told his tale as a reaction to the Knight's tale, the Reeve vows to tell a tale as a reaction to what the Miller has told, offended by his satiric description of aged carpenter in comparison to the younger characters of the Miller's Tale. He believes that the Miller's Tale was an attack on him, and will so tell a tale that is an attack on the Miller.
The Reeve's Tale:
At Trumpington, near Cambridge, there is a brook where nearby stands a mill. There is a miller who lived there once who wore ostentatious clothing and could play the bagpipe, wrestle and fish. He always had a knife with him, and had a round face and flattened nose. His name was Simon, and nicknamed Symkyn. His wife came from a noble family; her father was the parson. Symkyn was a jealous man and his wife pretentious. They had a daughter who was now twenty and a toddler. The miller was dishonest in his business dealings. He cheated the college worst of all, and stole meal and corn from the dying steward of Cambridge. Two students, John and Aleyn, received permission from the provost to see the corn ground at the mill. Aleyn tells Symkyn that he is there to ground the corn and bring it back, since the sick steward cannot. While they ground the corn, Symkyn found the students' horse and set it loo...
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...n this distinction is minor. Although they are students, they come from the more rustic northern area of England and show little of the savvy that Nicholas displayed in the previous tale. They are cheated out of their corn and lose their horse through the miller's deception. When they seduce the miller's wife and daughter, they do so merely out of opportunity and jealousy, and their actions seem to be little better than rape. The two students even lack that measure of lust that is present in the Miller's Tale and which might make the characters more sympathetic. In the end, most of the characters suffer some physical injury, but most of all the miller. For deceiving the students he found himself cuckolded, his daughter deflowered, and himself robbed and severely wounded. Even the means by which he is wounded is comic his wife conks him on the head with his staff.
tale is a child of a tale.
The narrator is the first element of humor Chaucer uses in his story. The Miller is rude and drunk but generally a jolly fellow. This sets the tone of story as being fun and even a bit coarse, just like the Miller himself. He tells a few jokes before he tells his story: "One shouldn't be two inquisitive in life? / Either about God's secrets or one's wife. / You'll find God's plenty all you could desire"(53). As well, the Miller wants to punish the Reeve, a ...
Connecting Sociology to situations that arise in everyday life has become easier and easier as i have progressed through Intro to Sociology this semester. When choosing what book I was going to analyze for my report, I chose Methland by Nick Reding. It details the quote “death and life of an american small town” through the perspective of those involved in the epidemic of the production of methamphetamine’s in the rural town of Oelwein Iowa. Despite the odds of a poor, small, and rural town in Middle America, Oelwein climbed to the top of the economic ladder with a multi million dollar drug franchise spread throughout the 1990’s. The midwest suffered greatly in the 1980’s with the downfall of the agricultural business in the United States. Soon drug dealers started flocking to these seemingly desolate towns in rural America to safely distribute their product. With the loss of jobs due to the farming downfall, many residents of Oelwein were seeking work and pay in anyway they could find. This is what started the official meth epidemic. Reding spent 4 years in his hometown of Oelwein Iowa to gain insight on the production and consumption of methamphetamine’s in this small town and also shines a spotlight on the problems of meth in this country today. But ironically, the comparison in this story of how the production and consumption of meth seemed to be driving this small town further into extinction, it also brought it back to life. Despite the destruction methamphetamines caused in Oelwein Iowa, the epidemic also brought the town back to life in a way that is irreversible. The highlight of the division of social class and who is able to climb up the social ladder is themed throughout the entire novel.
Despite the national attention the Watergate scandal had gained President Nixon, he won the second term presidency. The major problem for Nixon would come later. The investigations of the Watergate scandal lead to the discovery of other criminal acts by officials including Nixon. During the investigation many things begin to surface. It was discovered that documents had been destroyed that may have made a link between Nixon and the Watergate scandal. These documents may have shown that he had some acknowledgement in what had happened. There was evidence that people involved in the Nixon campaign had been wire tapping phones illegally for a long time according to “dummies.com”. The greatest issue would come to light during the 1973 Watergate hearings. During testimonies it came to light that every conversation was recorded in the Oval office according to “study.com”. It was demanded that these tapes be reviewed to learn how much involvement President Nixon had in the Watergate burglary. The President felt that he had the right to withhold these tapes through what he referred to as executive privilege. This means that if it is the best interest of the public the president has the right to keep information from the
The years leading up to the 1972 election were filled with new political tactics. Going into the election year, President Nixon seemed like he could never lose the second term election after successfully negotiating with Vietnam, Beijing, and Russia to improve international relations (Emery 4). Raising international toughness made Nixon seem like the most worthy person to stay president. Fred Emery analyses in his novel Watergate: The Corruption of American Politics and the Fall of Richard Nixon, the president was also setting up the first summit meeting in history with Soviet Union Presidents (3). There seemed to be nothing capable of holding the seemingly responsible man back. However, this assurance came with massive consequences. The absolute certainty that Nixon would be reelected fueled the lies and abuse of power by the Nixon government (Emery 195). As the outlook of landslide winnings took over the White House, the moral reasoning, “the end justifies the means” became more prevalent. Nixon was obsessed with winning and being successful. Under his command his staff did whatever possible to ...
Oswald, the overly-sensitive Reeve, is none too happy with the Miller and his tale. The drunken Miller tells an embarrassing tale about the Reeve indirectly. In defense, the Reeve tries his best to punch back, but his attempt is weak. The Reeve shares a story of a dishonest Miller, looking to avenge the Miller himself.
The Watergate Scandal was political problem that occurred in the United States during the 1970s. On June 17, 1972 a break in occurred at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Office Complex in Washington, D.C. Nixon's administration attempted cover up of its involvement. In the morning of June 17 1972, a couple of burglars were caught and arrested inside the of the Democratic National Committee, located at the Watergate building in Washington D.C. this was no ordinary robbery. The robbers were connected to the United States president Richard Nixon re election campaign, and they were caught trying to wiretap the phones. The robbers who tried to wiretap the phones were not successful. more robbers broke into the Watergate building with a new microphone, but a guard noticed that they broke the locks on the doors. The guard called the police as soon as possible, they showed up and caught the crooks red handed and took the to jail. it was not completely clear that the crooks were connected to the president Richard Nixon. There were suspicions that they were connected to nixon because detectives found the white house phone number in the spies junk. In later came that the president was not telling the truth. a few days after the break in president nixon provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in “hush money” to the spies/burglars. Then president Nixon and his aides established a plan to instruct the Central Intelligence Agency to impede the fbi's investigation of the crime. this was a bigger crime the the break in at Watergate this was abuse of presidential power and deliberate obstruction of justice. The watergate scandal was about president nixon and a few secret agents trying to steal secret government i...
The Watergate Scandal involved a number of illegal activities that were designed to help President Richard Nixon win re-election. The scandal involved burglary, wiretapping, campaign financing violations, and the use of government agencies to harm political opponents. A major part of the scandal was also the cover-up of all these illegal actions. “Watergate, however, differed from most previous political scandals because personal greed apparently did not play an important role. Instead Watergate attacked one of the chief features of Democracy – free and open elections” (Worldbook 1).
Millers’ prevailing strategy is pathos by appealing to the sympathetic side of the reader's emotions. Parris believes, “Now, Mr. Hale’s returned, there is hope” (pg 232). He is trying his best to save the people in his community. Danforth adds to this by calling Parris, “...a brainless man!” (pg 232). Anything Parris said, he denied. The reader can sympathize for this character because he is trying so hard to do the right thing, but
Throughout literature, relationships can often be found between the author of a story and the story that he writes. In Geoffrey Chaucer's frame story, Canterbury Tales, many of the characters make this idea evident with the tales that they tell. A distinct relationship can be made between the character of the Pardoner and the tale that he tells.
Within the larger context, the tales can be divided into groups. These ‘fragments’ are each cohesive, not in the least because of their treatment of a single overarching question or issue, as is examined in detail by structuralist critic Jerome Mandel, in Building the Fragments of the Canterbury Tales. Using Mandel’s premise as a beginning, one can further conjecture a structural similarity between the fragments; for the immediate purposes, a similarity between Fragments I (beginning with the Knight’s Tale) and III (beginning with the Wife’s Tale) is worth noting, in which an opening tale poses a serious question and partially addresses it, and a pair of lighter tales follows, each playing off the other to further examine the question. As the fragments progress, moreover, the questions as they arise encompass the previous question. Thus, the Wife of Bath’s Tale serves an important didactic purpose in encompassing the Knight’s, and heightening the level of the dialogue as Alice, the Wife of Bath, exams the validity of the question the knight poses in its entirety.
“Miller tries both to offer a disclaimer about the imaginative aspects of his work, and to claim a higher level of veracity for the play’s authority.” (133)
Through the first person narrator, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" illustrates how man's imagination is capable of being so vivid that it profoundly affects people's lives. The manifestation of the narrator's imagination unconsciously plants seeds in his mind, and those seeds grow into an unmanageable situation for which there is no room for reason and which culminates in murder. The narrator takes care of an old man with whom the relationship is unclear, although the narrator's comment of "For his gold I had no desire" (Poe 34) lends itself to the fact that the old man may be a family member whose death would monetarily benefit the narrator. Moreover, the narrator also intimates a caring relationship when he says, "I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult" (34). The narrator's obsession with the old man's eye culminates in his own undoing as he is engulfed with internal conflict and his own transformation from confidence to guilt.
Another example of being ungrateful is displayed by the behaviour of the old man and the high-cast girl, the fox woman. The old man was failed to pretend that he was handsome and rich. There was an old lady made
Most of the actions take place in the kitchen setting which demonstrates the author’s deliberate move to show the important details about the wifely role. The women hold their conversation in the unkempt kitchen, a domestic sphere that reveals everything about the lives of women. While the men were busy searching for clues around the farmhouse, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale see some evidence in the trifle that Mrs. Wright had left in the kitchen. The women can deduce that the messy kitchen with dirty pans gives a signal of incomplete work. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter spend most of their time in the messy kitchen that significantly reveal Mrs. Wright’s state of confusion (Manuel 61). Mrs. Hale understands Mrs. Wright’s experiences of loneliness and desperation from the male-dominated circumstances. The female characters sympathize with her situation by acknowledging the forces in her life that made her take the roles including that of murdering her husband. The men overlook the evidence that the women can trace in the house, and their dialogue suggests lack of sympathy towards women as noted from their humiliation and sarcasm towards women. For example, the women can relate the death of the canary to the murder scene. The attorney shows how woman’s concerns are unimportant, instead of sympathizing with Mrs. Wright for what has befallen her, they portray their women